The Deity Challenge Lineup - Game # 3 - Persia

Settled on the spot but on hindsight the hill/river/mountain & Uluru two turns away looked oh, so tempting so settling capital there would've been an interesting option had I seen Uluru on T0. Anyway, it'll be the place for city #2 unless somebody beats me to it. starting Liberty without a culture ruin is just crap - early expansion my ass when Hiawatha is settling his 6th city by the time the free settler kicks in. Luckily I haven't seen him around this time.

Anyway, borrowed a worker (probably a very industrious one) from the Japs which seemed to make Oda somewhat angry with me, one might even say he's a very hostile individual and hence refused to lend any more of his citizens - damn cheapskate.
Other than that I've met Dido & Suleiman so some wars are in the horizon and hopefully I don't have to buy all of them.
The dirt looks good and there's plenty of it so I might build quite a few cities of my own the option being that Ottomans will come into my face while Dido takes all the CSs and I'm in an endless status quoish battle with Oda while the rest, especially if this is 4-4 map, will all runaway from us.

To the game. I took the Uluru bait and settled right next to the mountain. I didn't realize it put me right next to Japan for quite some time because I scouted north then east with my warrior, then straight south with my scout. It was like turn 40 something before I found Japans borders. There is a lot of room to back fill the east which is kind of nice not to be surrounded this time.

Anyway, as I was scouting with my warrior I found a map ruin that showed the Great Barrier Reef within working distance(maybe 15 tiles from cap). When I finally picked up Uluru I decided to take the natural wonders pantheon and brought my first settler two tiles from GBR. So far I am pumping out faith at a pretty awesome rate.

Another issue with settling near Uluru is that you are four tiles from Samarkand. That was fine by me as they were the obvious choice for an xp farm. Immortals don't die and the citystate kept going after them and left the archers alone. I planted a citadel right in front of Samarkand and that actually kills the units inside the city. I decided not to upgrade the archers to composites because the cs refused to attack them. It meant that I was able to attack the cs much longer than normal and gained way more xp. By turn 97, which is when I researched machinery, I had two logistics archers and some more on the way possibly. It's getting harder to attack the cs because it is basically drained of defense. The disappointing part of all this was that I have no money to upgrade them for quite a while because I keep paying people to fight.

Looking at the leaders list I see that everyone on my continent is ranked in the bottom four, which means there is some major catchup to play. Japan has the great wall and Samurais already built, so they are my first target. I was able to drop a citadel on them to get in range. So much for our friendly relations. With my current money situation I am still 10-20 turns from attacking them.

I built the pyramids right away, then grabbed the Oracle in one of other cities. I'll try for Machu, but I'll have to hard build. I finished liberty and took a gs at turn 83 I believe.

Deciding where to settle was an interesting choice. I knew I wanted to get on one of the silvers, but it wasn’t clear which one, and I didn’t want to spend more than one turn moving. My warrior’s moves had revealed a mountain to the east, and that was the tiebreaker – the silver on the left would give me four tiles between me and the mountain, so I settled there in order to preserve the possibility of putting another city on the west side of the mountain.

I felt like it paid off pretty well when I scouted Uluru. (I can only imagine what this game would’ve been like if I wandered my starting settler more&#8230 In any case, seeing Uluru led me to build a Settler at Pop2. For Pantheon I took Religious Idols, which has been pretty strong. I hadn’t scouted GBR yet, so One With Nature wasn’t an option. I might prefer Religious Idols anyway. Religion got me Tithe and Mosques. I would’ve gotten Pagodas if my Prophet had bothered to spawn a turn earlier…

Opening build order in capital was: Scout – Monument – Settler – Caravan – Worker – Settler

Opening tech order was: Mining – Animal Husbandry – Archery – Masonry – Pottery – Calendar – Writing – Philosophy – Trapping – Bronze Working – Drama & Poetry – Theology

Getting Masonry that early was a mistake. My pregame plan involved building the Pyramids super early, but I decided that building a Settler at Pop2 had slowed me down too much and I needed to scrap that plan. Unfortunately I didn’t realize this until after I finished Masonry… it cost me a couple turns of unhappiness due to delaying Calendar. I beelined Theology because I wanted to get to Medieval Era to unlock Commerce (more on Commerce below).

I built Oracle in my capital while Pasargadae worked on the National College. National College just finished last turn, which I feel isn’t too terribly late.

For social policies, I went Tradtion opener –> Libery to Collective Rule > Legalism > Monarchy > Commerce Opener > Mercenary Army

I’m only three turns away from opening Mercantilism, which is just an amazing social policy. It’s possible that I’ll complete Commerce before opening Rationalism, but we’ll see how it goes. My general game plan is to set myself up with a ton of gold and happiness, buy all the buildings, and then grow a ton of cities super fast with Hospitals + Medical Labs to maximize peak science and blast through the tech tree with massive Great Scientists at end game. Space Procurements with Commerce will basically let me get all the spaceship parts free instantly. This means that I can save more scientists for actual peak science, rather than bulbing early to give myself time to build a couple parts like you would with Order. I expect to spam out a bunch of Trading Posts late game and spend the last 50+ turns just building science everywhere.

Miscellaneous details: I just bribed Oda to DOW Dido. I actually think I have enough army to defend against him, but I don’t want to lose my trades and trade routes. Losing those means that being at war would cost even more gold than bribing him, so it seemed like an obvious decision… I would like to generate a Great Engineer and a Great General before opening Industrialism in order to insta-build Big Ben and possibly connect Coal for quick Factories and early Ideology choice. We’ll see if I manage to get either. Skipping Pyramids was definitely a blow to the Engineer plan… Suleiman got blocked pretty hard. Partially a function of Japan taking Samarkand super early... Persepolis Susa, Ecbatana, and Tarsus are all settled directly on Silver. I look forward to building a lot Mints this game ... I got two ruins: a map and barb camps. Thanks a lot... Japan has Temple of Artmeis. I'll probably try to take that at Artillery. It should be absolutely insane with the late-game I want to play.

I've gone Liberty and Lib/Trad hybrid the past two games, so this time it will be straight Tradition. (If I'd known how strong this start was I might have tried Peity.)

Strong start. I don't really think there is a wrong move, but I chose the silver hill. Early exploration shows Uluru and close Japan -> build a settler at pop 3 to go and grab that spot. It's behind a mountain and provides good protection against Japanese aggression

Chose Religious Idols and stumbled into a faith ruin -> turn 58 religion I don't really know what to do with a religion on Deity, but Tithe and Pagodas are usually good right?

Bad luck:

- Barbs came at an inopportune time to pillage a silver mine and kill a Japanese caravan.
- Japan declared war on (and quickly conquered) my Worker farm, so I've had to slow build some. No XP farm either probably.

Good luck:

- Finished Trad pre turn 80.
- Won two early culture races for CS states!
- Oracle opened up commerce.

My land:

Game notes

-I captured Kyoto, Istanbul, and Carthage by turn 188. I just let Wellington capture the last Carthaginian city.
-War with Japan lasted from t112-154. He kept spamming Samurai, but he upgraded my xbows to madmen.
-I was able to snag Machu on turn 130ish. I guess nobody wanted it.
-First Ottoman city was taken with xbows, and the second two were taken with gatling guns.
-I lost all three of my super upgraded immortal pikes trying to capture Istanbul. Apparently they have a hard time being useful between civil service and metallurgy.
-Utique had been captured by the Ottomans, so I took that city as well. It gave me a front porch view into Carthage.
-Suluiman gave me 165gpt to stop kicking his ass.
-I paid everyone on the other continent to declare on Dido. While she was distracted I took her capital.
-I adopted an ideology first and chose autocracy. The second decider was Alex and he also took Autocracy. As of turn 191 we are the only ideologies.
-Alex has the Polynesian capital. I never met Kamalama, so when I finally do decide to attack Alex it will probably be a few nukes.
-Still don't have artillery and I somehow forgot to research public schools, which was stupid, but Alex has it and I have a spy in his city.
-I'm building the PT right now because I'm the only rationalism adopter. That won't be done til after turn 200.


Going forward

I've got open borders with Alex, which means he will let me go attack Poland from his turf. I kinda need to get artillery before I even consider going to the other continent. That is still 12 turns away. I hate waiting in these types of games. Alex is willing to DOW anyone for 2gpt and open borders, so I have that going for me. We will be life long friends him and I. Here are some pics.




Edit: I just realized from looking at these pics that Japan was taken over by a cs. Huh...